Rory

When I came into Microsoft, I joined as an SDET, which is a Software Development Engineer in Test. So the training I got when I came on the job was really around what my role is as a Tester, which I found really corresponded a lot with what I covered in College in the Testing and Software Quality Streams. It was quite refreshing to see, one, that what I covered in University was applicable to the job I was doing at the moment and, two, that Microsoft has such a firm belief in testing and in software quality as a discipline.

The other side of our training was all the grad-related training that we did. I think we got about nine training sessions exclusively for us, which were soft skills partly, and then there we learnt more about technical and business skills relating to how you can succeed as a graduate coming into Microsoft and how you can basically bring the fresh ideas that we generally have – and a lot of us do seem to have these kind of nice ideas that we'd like to see implemented – into reality.

The management structure here is so relaxed, it's refreshing. I used to work for a different company in which you'd only speak to your direct manager. You wouldn't skip up a level. Whereas here, they've got an open door policy as regards the managers. Managers always sit very near you, and there's no manager I've ever tried to approach that has shooed me away. Everyone within the company is just so pleasant to work with. Without a doubt, it's just one of the most relaxed companies I've ever encountered. I definitely didn't foresee that we'd be this relaxed as a company when I joined. I kind of had an opinion of Microsoft which was shattered the moment I walked in the door.

One of my favourite things about working for Microsoft is definitely that I'm working for one of the biggest companies in the software side of things, so they have the most impact on the most amount of people around the world. It's always been one of my dreams to be involved in these kinds of groundbreaking technologies and these extremely intelligent specialists in their fields.